Are you an experienced leader with the drive and passion to both grow and oversee the Missions department, in order to release the national movement to mission and offering spiritual leadership along the rest of the BYFC Leadership Team?

If you’re in London or the South this looks like a decent conference if you’re involved in urban youth ministry, evangelism, or church planting. They’ve run them up North for years and I’ve always been gutted I haven’t been able to make them. I’m in France for this one, which is a nice compensation to not being able to go.

Proximity is a one day regional gathering for leaders and practitioners in: urban church, urban youth ministry, incarnational living, church planting and missional community. It is being hosted by the Eden Network.

The Church of England’s Education Office with the Mission and Public Affairs Division are looking to appoint a Youth Evangelism Officer who will work across the Church of England, and across the two Divisions, to increase capacity for Evangelism and Mission among 11 – 18 year olds. This is an exciting new development for the national church; the successful applicant will be creative and innovative, passionate about evangelism with young people and have the opportunity to shape the work for the future.

This is an incredible find, William Wilberforce writing to a 14 year old family friend, counselling them over their suffering and misery and pointing them to the comfort that God has done this for their good. Would you dare counsel a 14 year this way?

A new-to-me entry in to the top five all time ever dumbest theories about the existence of Jesus is the theory that the story of Jesus Christ was ‘fabricated to pacify the poor’ by the Romans. Despite this claim not making any sense whatsoever when –instead of hitting the retweet button– you stop and think about it, it gives the impression of authenticity by being claimed by a ‘biblical scholar’. The person is a biblical scholar in the same way that BP are climate change experts, or Fox News viewers are Hawaiian birth certificate experts. Jesus’ historical existence is actually quite similar to climate change, in that pretty much every single expert who has ever studied the issue properly has decided that yes, this is true. The people who inevitably deny it either haven’t read the research properly, have a vested interest in it being false, or most likely both. Here’s noted disbeliever in the divinity of Jesus and actual biblical scholar Bart D. Ehrman on whether Jesus was real:

“the claim that Jesus was simply made up falters on every ground”

“These views are so extreme and so unconvincing to 99.99 percent of the real experts that anyone holding them is as likely to get a teaching job in an established department of religion as a six-day creationist is likely to land on in a bona fide department of biology.”

Could you be the leader of Festive? Festive is a bit like Fusion or UCCF but for FE colleges. In their own words:

Festive was formed in 2007 by a small group of people with experience of ministering in Further Education who were keenly aware of and concerned about the lack of support available to Christian students staff and chaplains in this part of the education sector. Working in partnership with Scripture Union and UCCF, through prayerful obedience to God and through His gracious provision of resources, much has been achieved.

If you want to encourage your children or young people to be actively listening during the service, then some kind of worksheet is not a terrible idea. This is a good example below. I know someone who asks one of his daughters to draw quick pictures of what they think the preacher is saying. It helps her think through the passage.

(Found floating round the internet, annoying I can’t find the original source.)